Hiding books

Last time I did this it was with American Psycho. On reflection it was alittle foolish, but that book also scared the shit outa me.

My grandparents had that Reader's Digest "Mysteries of the Unexplained" book, I think. There were all sorts of weird things in it that scared me, but despite that I read the whole thing. I think I remember from that book a photo of the remains of an old woman who had spontaneously combusted - half a leg lying next to a chair!

I remember a small comic strip in a religious magazine when I was about 8 and on holiday in Cyprus; that had a small, poor, boy starving to death and then God taking his soul up to heaven.

Scared the shit out of me and I hid it under my pillow. Never got the religious bug, wonder why.

I hide books when I am the company of people who may are may not pay lip-service to the joys of reading a good book, but when confronted with an actual example of a book hold it like it's an artifact of an alien civilization.

at some point between childhood and adulthood i stole a copy of stephen king's 'it' from the public library and hid it in my room and read it in secret - because i had stolen it, obviously, but i stole it because i had gathered somehow that the book was too mature for me and i wouldn't be allowed to check it out; and so also because of the content. at some point my mom found the book and made me return it (thankfully, only in the bookdrop, not in person); after that i was allowed to check out 'adult' books from the library.

i wonder now if she privately told the librarian where the book had gone.